Monday, March 19, 2018

Human Relationships

The Human Condition

“No man is an iland, intire of it selfe; every man is a peece of the Continent, a part of the maine; if a clod bee washed away by the Sea, Europe is the lesse, as well as if a Promontorie were, as well as if a Mannor of thy friends or of thine owne were; any mans death diminishes me, because I am involved in Mankinde; And therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls; It tolls for thee....”

—John Donne [1572–1631], Meditation 17

Devotions upon Emergent Occasions (1624)

Young People’s Concerts (YPC) with young people in close proximity to Leonard Bernstein [1918–1990], conductor of the New York Philharmonic Orchestra. Bernstein conducted a total of 53 YPC performances between 1958 and 1972—first at Carnegie Hall and then at Lincoln Center. There was an audience who were physically present, who were not facing the kind of distractions (chiefly from “social media) that young people today routinely face. As an educator, Bernstein has a engaging way with both his young audience and old audience alike. Music not only speaks a universal language; it brings people together. For a wonderful example, you can view the beginning of the first Bernstein YPC concert shown here; It is titled “What Does Music Mean?” (CBS-TV; on January 18, 1958), The full script can be read here. We need more shows like this today, notably if we as a society care about such things as sincerity, authenticity, imagination and intimacy, so lacking today in “new media” productions.

We are social beings, with a need to connect, to bond and to form relationships with each other. “No Man is an Island,” John Donne, the 17th century metaphysical poet, reminds us in his famous piece of prose turned into a poem; and I am here bringing this down to its most essential meaning to raise a point, an issue, that is important to all of us, in that we are all human and want what all humans want. Or at least we start out that way as children; and over time things fall apart.

Persons who are isolated, who are alienated from society, who are outside of social circles, and who have the inability to form relationships with others suffer immensely as a result. When such persons, by reasons of innate personality or illness or experiential circumstances, do not or can not form human relationships, they suffer loneliness, alienation and social anxiety. The pain of exclusion is real, and there are tangible consequences. This is no doubt tragic, since this is what humans are meant to do, what is among the primary purpose of all humans.

So, in pursuit of this, many enter a space that is not really a space in the physical sense or in any measurable way or in any real way; and this “space” is given a nice-sounding name: “social media,” which is what it is named, because it contains the promise of being social, to connect with others, of sociability. This is or becomes the only or the main means that many people today have with the outside world, even though it is as unreal as unreal can be, as lacking in any form of human connectedness as one could or would expect with being in a non-existent space.

Many, particularly the young, argue that it does exist. If so, consider the following questions about the 15-year social experiment that claims the whole world as its laboratory: Is this the best that humans can offer humanity? Is this necessarily good? Has it actually made persons less sociable? less willing to be sincere, open, honest, authentic? Has it actually made too many people more hostile, fearful and angry? Sufficient anecdotal evidence says that this is so; science might eventually confirm this, although I do not see this happening soon.

Yet, for many it has to do for now, either because of low expectations or because that is all they know, a result of long-term conditioning, where social media acts as a replacement for intimate friendship, intimate relationships, intimate talks and discussions. When you think about it, you conclude that this, “social media,” is but a poor replacement. Even this blog is only a blog, written from my 6th floor apartment in Toronto, which in no way can replace the contact that humans need and find essential to their well-being.

Human relationships require physical proximity, they require time, they require sincerity, they require nurturing. Yet, some, probably more than some, have only the counterfeit, it appearing genuine in people’s minds. Yet, it must be said that the counterfeit, no matter how it appears, is only that which it is. It is a cheap forgery, poorly imagined and poorly constructed, bereft of authenticity. If such is the case, and I have no doubt that it is, then “social media” cannot meet the normal expectation of human relationships. Its purpose is outside of this realm.

Yet, it starts early, this entering of an unreal space for many children, through online games and video games, many of them violent, which has replaced the real world of play and imagination with very real-world consequences, including social alienation and social isolation (see “Was Your Childhood Happy?; November 18, 2013). As a parent, I tried to play some of the online games my older son plays, but I found these too violent. It was not possible for me to play for more than a few minutes.

Social media, of which I was a willing participant for some time, suffers from a similar problem; not surprising, I have found it wanting of late. So, it is now natural and normal for me to say, “No, I do not think or believe that this is the best that humans can offer.” Far from it, especially if you consider what existed before and which now does not much exist for free public viewing, such as the Young People’s Concerts. In the Age of Social Media, there has been a “progression” to mediocrity, narcissism, and vulgarity. I am not sure if this is what the public wants, but it is what it gets.

Seeing this reality, some have decided to do something about it. In other words, throw out the forgery and look to obtain the real item. Or simply put, forget social media altogether (e.g., I closed all of my accounts; this blog remains open for now), viewing it as a unnecessary and tiring effort with no reward or benefit of personal relationships of any type. Now, having done this recently, I can happily say that this is a worthwhile endeavor on the journey for meaning and purpose.

Great Advances in Science John Hopps is seen testing the world’s first pacemaker in this 1946 photo. Photo Credit : National Rese...

Yiddish Sites

There are dozens of sites dedicated to Yiddish language, culture and music. Here are some that I have found noteworthy. I will add to the list regularly. If you have a Yiddish site or know of one, please do not hesitate to contact me at pjgreenbaum@gmail.com:

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Afn Shvel (“On the Threshold”), a magazine published by the League for Yiddish, dating to 1941, it is committed to the promotion and preservation of the Yiddish language and culture. It published two double issues a year. Its editor-in-chief is Sheva Zucker;

American Jewish Archive at Hebrew Union College’s Jewish Institute of Religion contains more than 10 million pages of documents. manuscripts, genealogical materials, as well as thousands of audiovisual recordings, photographs, microfilm and digital collections;Committee For Yiddish, in Toronto, in partnership with UJA Federation, fosters and promotes Yiddish language and culture—indeed the entire Ashkenaz tradition—as a vibrant part of contemporary Jewish life and as a vital link between the Jewish past and future

Center for Jewish History, in New York City, has 5 miles of archival material (in dozens of languages), more than 500,000 volumes, as well as thousands of artworks, textiles, ritual objects, recordings and photographs;

Forverts (“Forward”), one of the first mass Yiddish newspapers in America, founded in New York City in 1897;Jewish Folk Songs, by Batya Fonda, is a series of lectures given in either English or Hebrew about the ways folk songs reflect different themes of Jewish heritage;

Golden Age of Yiddish Radio, the 1930s to the 1950s, is brought to you by the Dora Teitelboim Center for Yiddish Culture in Miami, Florida.

JewishGen Yizkor Book Project, a database of more than 1,000 yizkor books worldwide, a good number of them have been translated from Hebrew and Yiddish into English;

Language and Cultural Atlas of Ashkenazic Jews, from Columbia University, consists of 5,755 hours of audio tape interviews with Yiddish-speaking Jews from Central and eastern Europe, done between 1959 and 1972 along with around 100,000 pages of linguistic field notes;

Lexilogos, a compilation of Yiddish online resources, including dictionaries, grammar books, and a translation of the Torah (Toyre) in Yiddish;

Milken Archive of Jewish Music, a record of the American Jewish Experience; since 1990, it has become the largest collection of American Jewish music with about 600 recorded works, including a number in Yiddish;

Museum of the Yiddish Theatre, an online museum originating in New York City and founded by Dr. Steven Lasky, has in its collection such items as photographs, theatre programs, sheet music, audio recordings and other documents of some importance and historical significance;

Pakn Treger, (“itinerant bookseller in Eastern Europe who traveled from shtetl to shtetl ”), the magazine of the Yiddish Book Centre;

Recorded Sound Archives (RSA) of Florida Atlantic University in Boca Raton contains more than 100,000 recordings of music, a great many in Yiddish;

Songs of My People, a site by Josephine Yalovitser dedicated to Yiddish songs of mourning and of joy;

The National Center For Jewish Film, based at Brandeis University in Waltham, Mass., is the home to 15,000 reels of feature films, documentaries, newsreels, home movies and institutional films, dating from 1903 to the present; this effort has led to the revival of Yiddish cinema;

Yizkor Book Collection at the New York Public Library provide a documentation of daily life, through essays and photographs and the memoralizing of murdered residents, of Jewish communities destroyed in the Holocaust. Of the 750 yizkor books in its collection, 618 have been digitalized. Most yizkor books are in Yiddish or Hebrew;

Yungtruf (“call to youth”), the site says, “cultivates the active use of the Yiddish language among today’s youth here and abroad by creating opportunities for Yiddish learning and immersion, and by providing resources and support for Yiddish speakers and families within an expansive social network”;